There’s no escaping Fox’s ‘Wayward Pines’

The late ABC drama — which is being revived by Showtime next year — “was an inspiration for the [Fox] show, for sure,” executive producer Chad Hodge admitted at a Televisions Critics Association winter press tour panel on Saturday. However, the 10-episode thriller — which follows a Secret Service agent (played by Matt Dillon, There’s Something About Mary) who comes to a deceptively bucolic Idaho town to search for two federal agents who’ve gone missing — “goes to very different places,” Hodge added. Carla Gugino, Melissa Leo and Shannyn Sossamon co-star, and in guest roles Juliette Lewis plays a bartender and Terrence Howard is the sheriff of the creepy town, from which Dillon’s Agent Ethan Burke can’t escape. “I’m drawn to atmospheric projects,” Dillon said at the Television Critics Association Saturday. “This show is particularly tricky because you have different levels of reality for everybody.

Night Shyamalan also had discussions about what the existence of novels meant for viewers, who could easily pick them up and find out what happens next. In the end, it turned to be “a real asset for us,” Shyamalan insisted. “There’s differences in the book and the show.” “You do find out the big truth halfway through the season and then we continue our story with where book 2 and 3 go,” Hodge revealed. One of the best Secret Service agents in the Seattle office, he’s the man who knew missing agent KATE HEWSON (Carla Gugino, “Watchmen,” “Entourage”) better than anyone. It’s a perfect reveal.” Shyamalan added that having the plot twist so early in the run allows the show to “live in it” and afterward, “it becomes an entirely different genre.” Everything changes when a truck slams into his car…and he wakes up in the Wayward Pines Hospital, with the intense and unpredictable NURSE PAM (Academy Award and Emmy Award winner Melissa Leo, “The Fighter,” “Treme”) at his bedside.

Ethan’s continuing investigation only turns up more and more questions, and each one leads him to the most important question of all: What’s wrong with Wayward Pines? The series was developed for television by Chad Hodge (“The Playboy Club,” “Runaway”) and executive-produced by Donald De Line (“Green Lantern,” “The Italian Job”), Ashwin Rajan (“After Earth,” “Devil”), Hodge and Shyamalan.